Death Spider

Darn thing. Seriously. Why would a spider think that my car is a great place to hang out?

It's not. Trust me on this; you will die a flowery death. But I'm getting ahead of myself again. So, in a moment of beyond-suicidal stupidity, the silly thing decides to climb up my leg.

Fortunate or not, it had perfect timing and I was stopped at a stop sign, so I did manage not to mangle my car (very fortunate) or myself inside said car (also fortunate) or the silly spider (ah, the unfortunate part). Even better, I had on rather thick pants, so I didn't even feel it (yea! A bright spot!).

This, however, leads to the what-if paranoia... had I not looked down at that exact moment, etc., too terrible to consider!

Needless to say, I immediately pulled over and jumped out of my car... naturally gathering quite the collection of strange looks. All alone, and feeling fairly un-defended against the great, wild world, I stood outside my car with absolutely no concept of what to do.

I looked inside, of course, and saw it playing dead, the evil thing. I'm not that stupid though, so I wasn't falling for it (good thing too, since it was pretending).

So what is a Certified Chicken-Wuss to do when confronted by this level of torment? Open the furthest-away door and seek out a method of spider extraction which does not involve shooing it away with my hand, because I'm just not going there.

Natural genius that I am, I located an Oatmeal to Go box and some Febreeze. Yes, those are my weapons of choice. Hard as it is to believe, I had been attempting to clean out my car, and I was seriously low on options.

Not to worry, though, I apparently possess enough skill as a spider-hunter to make even these pitiful items sufficient.

I'm sure you won't be surprised when I say that I sprayed the spider. I don't know why I did it. It wasn't moving. Let's just say I didn't trust it.

It was a good instinct, too, because as soon as I sprayed the bugger, it started running around.

(Yes, I do realize that if you spray me with Febreeze I will also run around. There is a minor difference, though, in that I do not hide in your car pretending to be dead and waiting to bite you.) (Shut up, Tony, I do not.)

So then I had an ugly Morning Fresh-scented spider running around my car, and I started to think that this wasn't a brilliant plan, as it could hide and I would then have to abandon my car and walk everywhere. Bad for me, good for spider, I didn't seem to be winning, and the Febreeze was looking less than intelligent.

All was not lost, though, and I did manage to use the Oatmeal box to flick him out into the parking lot, where, if he had had any sense, he would have stayed from the start. Thank you for listening. I have to go now; I need to buy a can of Raid.